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Smart Cities

Smart cities promise great things through urban digitisation: real-time responses to logistical challenges that stem from ever-expanding urban areas; benefits for the education and health system; boosts in political participation; advances for the sharing economy. At #rp17 we spoke to you about intuitive mobility, energy transition through Blockchain, open source and zero-emission logistics. We wish to continue the debate at #rp18, differentiating between relevant issues on smart cities: What’s new on this topic today? Which opportunities arise through urban connectivity and what limitations (still) exist? Which goals are we setting and which ethical issues must we face in this context?

Smart City infrastructure is surveillance infrastructure because data collection is part of making cities “smart.” A central privacy challenge of Smart Cities is how to communicate what data is being collected, by whom, and for what purpose. This talk explores the user experience of Smart Cities from a privacy and consent perspective. Imminent changes in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provide an opportunity to rethink consent in data collection. By critiquing existing Smart City apps, we identify opportunities for better communicating how personal data is used.

The talk will introduce you to the idea of sustainable (circular, open and free) cities and explain why hacking seems to be the only viable technique to invent and create these cities. A quick theoretical introduction will be followed by a catalogue of examples for city hacks reaching from hacking urban furniture to hacking large scale infrastructures. Some hacks have been done and some are yet to do.